Is a Kiss just a Kiss?

I had the honor of spending 90 minutes recently being interviewed by Katherine Woodward Thomas, author of Conscious Uncoupling, for one of her private classes. It sparked powerful memories and fifty-odd years of relationship, love, separation. and divorce.

While many are doing the sacred work of “uncoupling,” I have lived that sacred work with Charles successfully since 1997. Best Beloved Friends is a worthy choice during and after ending what we believed was a “forever” marriage.

Now I share with you the picture that was taken of my first kiss with Will, fifteen years ago at Maui airport saying good-bye and Aloha to the only man who claimed my attention after my separation and ultimate divorce with the Beloved Charles, four years prior.

I pasted this little saying to the photo many moons ago and it’s still there, proudly the centerpiece of one of many altars in our home.

In speaking with Katherine I authentically praised her very successful and best-selling book, Calling In The One. I ponder about “the One,” having felt each time that I was marrying the One. Each moment with the One is each moment with whomever I am with, if that makes any sense to you. That, to me, is full Connection or showing up in full presence with each invitation to become “one.”

In my wisdom years, I now acknowledge there are more “the Ones” than we can ever imagine. Yet aching and yearning for the One is a function inside each of us that drives our psyche and our sexuality forward. In my thirty years of guiding and participating in Tantric Pujas (a moving mandala of loving presence with each person), I developed the skill of bringing one hundred percent of me into presence with a new individual each moment and in every breath. The tall, the short, or the not so attractive are each The One for those few precious moments in time.

This practice has taught me how huge love really is! And as the little sign in the picture says, staying in love is where real love resides. Living the love that I am is not always easy. I get irritable… I get impatient… I move at a different speed of light than my dearest One… I am annoyed when hard of hearing seems to be his choice, rather than his problem.

But real love, not pretend love, is the outcome of this awareness. This is the staying in love, deepening into love, and growing into the love that happens when a couple ages together over the long term of relationship. I would love to hear about YOUR experience of the work and the commitment it takes to continue deepening into the warm river of unconditional love …

To The One, Caroline